Ars Magica 5e - Guardians of the Forest - The Rhine Tribunal.pdf - Ars Magicka - artofantonius

Credits

A UTHORS : Mark Shirley and Andrew Smith

E DITING AND D EVELOPMENT : David Chart

C OVER I LLUSTRATION : Grey Thornberry

I NTERIOR A RT : Grey Thornberry, Wilhelm Beckmann, K.

Dielitz, Alphonse de Neuville, S. Schneider

C ARTOGRAPHY : Alexander Bradley, Andrew Smith

A RS M AGICA 5 TH E DITION T RADE D RESS : J. Scott Reeves

L AYOUT AND A RT C OORDINATION : John Nephew

P ROOFREADING : Michelle Nephew

P LAYTESTERS : Alexander Bader, Tanja Bader, Stefan Ehret,

Alexander Gerber, MaPhi Messner; Donna Giltrap,

Malcolm Harbrow, Aaron Hicks, Richard Love; Chris

Jensen-Romer, Peter Hiley, Kevin Sides, Luke Price,

Lloyd Graney, Ed Woods; David Woods; Andrea C.

Cofalik, Ulrich Willmünder; Erik Dahl; Matt Ryan

S PECIAL T HANKS : Jerry Corrick and the gang at the

Source

About the Authors

M ARK S HIRLEY is a zoologist who lives in the Loch

Leglean Tribunal yet works in the Stonehenge Tribunal,

four miles away. His various alter-egos include a Flambeau

specializing in Herbam, a half-orc paladin, a spy called

Spud and a walking Van Der Graf Generator. He likes his

sagas convoluted, his characters confused, his heroes

ﬂawed, and his players skittish. Contrary to rumor, he

does not raise prize-winning armadillos. This is his second

book for Ars Magica.

Mark would like to thank the original players of

Waddenzee's magi for many hundreds of hours of enjoy-

able game time, even though they will probably never for-

give him for his plot twists! Mark would also like to thank

Phyllie and Georgie for the kind of support only ferrets

can provide.

A NDREW P. S MITH poses as a 31-year-old research

scientist and professional pedant living in Constance, at

the border of the Rhine and Greater Alps Tribunals. Since

he is a quarter German, this, his ﬁrst book, represents a

probably misguided attempt to get more in touch with his

Teutonic side. He is beginning to develop a ruthless

German efﬁciency and an appreciation for that country’s

ﬁne beer, but sadly the arcane secrets of German grammar

and humour yet elude him.

Andrew would like to thank the players of Triﬂumina

for testing out the Rhine Gorge saga and providing unwit-

ting inspiration for some of the characters in this book,

and the storyguide and players of In Aestio Saxum for

inducting him into German roleplaying.

Ars Magica players participate in a thriving fan community by subscribing to email discussion

lists (like the Berkeley list), compiling archives of game material (such as Project Redcap), main-

taining fan-created web sites, and running demos through Atlas Games’ Special Ops program.

To learn more, visit www.atlas-games.com/ArM5.

by any means without written permission from the publisher, except short excerpts for the pur-

pose of reviews, is expressly prohibited.

Ars Magica , Mythic Europe, Covenants, Guardians of the Forests and Charting New Realms of

Imagination are trademarks of Trident, Inc. Order of Hermes, Tremere, and Doissetep are trade-

marks of White Wolf, Inc. and are used with permission.

Digital Edition Version 1.0

Table of

Contents

Chapter I: Introduction

Lower Lorraine .....................................46

Triamore...............................................47

The Margravate of Meissen ...............100

The Margravate of Lusatia .................100

Germany.................................................4

The Rhine Tribunal................................4

History and Myth ..................................5

How to Use This Book ..........................5

Chapter VI:

The Black Forest

Chapter X: Bohemia

Bohemia..............................................101

Irencillia..............................................104

The Margravate of Moravia ...............108

Roznov ...............................................108

Chapter II: History of

Mythic Germany

Durenmar .............................................51

Dankmar...............................................62

Swabia ..................................................64

Germania Magna....................................8

The Great Migration..............................8

The Merovingians ..................................9

The Frankish Empire ..............................9

The Rise of the New Empire................11

Frederick Barbarossa.............................13

Chapter VII:

The Lowlands

Chapter XI:

Rhine Sagas

Establishing Your Covenant...............110

The Crintera Schism ..........................111

Wind, Wave, and Ice .........................112

Between the Devil and the Deep

Blue Sea.......................................112

The Hidden Covenant .......................113

Friesland ...............................................66

Waddenzee ..........................................66

Holstein................................................68

Oculus Septentrionalis .........................70

Saxony..................................................76

Chapter III:

Tribunal History &

Customs

Chapter XII:

Curse of the Rhine

Gorge

History .................................................15

Upon Being a Rhine Magus .................19

Tribunal Gatherings .............................24

The Gilds of the Rhine Tribunal .........27

Chapter VIII:

Central Germany

The Harz Mountains............................80

Fengheld ...............................................82

Thuringia..............................................85

Franconia ..............................................87

Bavaria ..................................................89

Chapter IV:

The Forest

Local Hermetic History .....................115

The Saga Begins .................................115

The Rhine Gorge ...............................119

The Westerwald .................................127

The Mosel Valley...............................129

Establishing a Covenant.....................134

The Curse...........................................137

The Forest ............................................30

The Paths Through the Forest .............35

Chapter IX:

The Eastern Marches

Appendices

Chapter V: The Rhine

The Baltic Sea ......................................90

Rügen ...................................................91

Crintera ................................................92

Pomerania.............................................98

The Margravate of Brandenburg ........100

Appendix A: Languages and Names ..138

Appendix B: Timeline ........................139

Appendix C: Bibliography .................143

The Upper Rhine .................................41

Upper Lorraine.....................................43

The Lower Rhine .................................45

Chapter One

Introduction

Herzlich Willkommen! You have come to

the Rhine Tribunal, the oldest and great-

est of them all. Here, at the center of the

Order of Hermes, at covenants steeped in

ancient wisdom and majesty, the power of

Hermetic magic reigns supreme. Or at

least, so its magi would have you believe...

In reality this vision is naught but a wist-

ful and distant memory of elderly magi

hidden away in dusty Durenmar towers.

The Rhine Tribunal of 1220 AD is a rather

different place to that which the Founders

and Charlemagne knew. Magic has now

retreated, hidden away from the many

cities of a burgeoning empire, where bish-

ops vie with dukes and merchants for tem-

poral power. Yet among these mundanes,

more than a few magi also secretly cast

their net, grasping for their share of the

spoils. Others choose instead to spurn the

mundanes and hide among the countless

forests, where the old powers remain

undimmed — such magi proclaim them-

selves the guardians of these wildernesses.

But are they really the masters of these

domains, or merely the servants of the

ancient spirits that they house? Magi with

divergent interests prosecute petty politi-

cal squabbles; apathy reigns and the

Tribunal stagnates. Perhaps you are the

one who will restore the Rhine to its for-

mer glory?

crowned at Aachen and maintains a trea-

sury at Nuremberg) and no ﬁxed court.

Germany is also part of an empire,

although the German Empire is more

commonly called the Holy Roman

Empire, the greatest Christian realm on

earth. Unless he makes a major political

misstep, the German king is subsequently

crowned by the Pope at Rome, where-

upon he assumes the title of Holy Roman

Emperor, which includes the titles of King

of Italy and King of Burgundy. The

newly-crowned emperor, Frederick II, is

also the king of Sicily — he will not even

return to Germany for more than a

decade, occupied as he is by Italian poli-

tics, rivalry with the Pope, and crusading.

Germany, ﬁve hundred miles across

in either direction, is a diverse landscape

of towns and farms, forests, mountains,

and lakes, as well as islands and swamps. It

is home to many dozens of prosperous

cities, the largest and grandest of which is

Cologne, although none match up to the

size of the great European metropolises

such as Constantinople, Rome, or Paris, or

the wealth of the northern Italian cities.

More than half the land is covered by

expansive forests, many of which are

untamed wildernesses. The industrious

lower classes occupy themselves with

farming, hunting, ﬁshing, woodcutting,

the brewing of ales and wines, the weav-

ing of cloth, and the mining of salt and sil-

ver. The cities thrive with merchants,

Jews, and craftsmen of all types.

lands of the Holy Roman Empire north of

the Alps. To the north it is bordered by

the Jutland peninsula (Denmark), which is

nominally territory of the Novgorod

Tribunal, although the Order of Hermes

has scant presence there. The eastern bor-

der, that with the Novgorod Tribunal

proper, has been contentious, subject to

ﬂuctuation and dispute — the boundary is

very roughly approximated by the River

Oder, with Poland belonging ﬁrmly to

Novgorod. To the south, the Rhine

Tribunal extends as far as the River

Danube (an old Roman border), beyond

which lies the Tribunal of the Greater

Alps. The notional western border con-

sists of the mouth of the river Schelde, the

Ardennes, and the Argonne — beyond

lies Flanders and France, territory of the

Normandy Tribunal.

The Rhine Tribunal is home to

approximately 130 magi, almost a ninth of

the 1200 members of the Order of

Hermes, making it the largest as well as

the oldest of all the thirteen Tribunals.

Magi here descend from a mixture of

A Note on

German Names

Germany

German-speaking readers should

note that we have used the English ver-

sions of many German place names

(for example “Black Forest” instead of

“Schwarzwald” and “Brunswick” instead

of “Braunschweig”) and people (for

example “Charlemagne” instead of

“Karl der Grosse” and “Henry the Lion”

instead of “Heinrich der Löwe”). We

have adopted some German creature

names, but have used English-style

capitalization and plurals (for example

“bockmen” instead of “Bockmänner”).

Further information on German lan-

guages and names may be found in

Appendix A.

Germany is a kingdom of more than

ﬁve million souls in north-central Europe.

Its king, elected from among powerful

rival families by a council of bishops,

dukes, and counts, rules over a vast patch-

work of realms with a variety of customs,

languages, and titles (margravates,

duchies, and even a subject kingdom).

The kingdom is loosely organized, with

no capital city (although the king is

The Rhine

Tribunal

The Rhine Tribunal consists not just

of the valley of the River Rhine, but

extends, broadly speaking, over all the

The Rhine Tribunal

Roman and Germanic traditions, with an

addition of Slavic and Scandinavian inﬂu-

ences. Here at the historical center of the

Order of Hermes, home to the Grand

Tribunal, are to be found within the

forests some of the most ancient

covenants, including the domus magnae

of Houses Bjornaer, Bonisagus, and

Merinita. Other, newer, covenants are to

be found within mundane lands or even

cities. The landscape of the Rhine

Tribunal is also littered with the ruins of

failed covenants, those that have fallen

prey to enemies Hermetic or otherwise.

places, with contemporary legends. For

example, the Brocken is a real mountain

where pagan gods were formerly wor-

shiped, and the Walpurgis Night proces-

sion of “witches” continues to this day. A

number of the mythic sites are invented;

broadly speaking, these are the ones that

are Hermetic in nature (such as

covenants). A small number of other sites

(for example the Drenthe megaliths and

the Rhinefalls) are real places for which

we have invented stories.

much of this book is safe for you to read,

there are numerous plots and statistics

scattered throughout that may be best

kept secret. Chapters 11 and 12 consist

mostly of saga plans.

Secondly, not all the covenants, and

by no means all the magi of the Rhine

Tribunal, are described in this book.

Anywhere from one to six additional

covenants are therefore left to the sto-

ryguide(s) to devise, one of which may be

the covenant of the player characters. The

number of extra covenants you create may

depend in part on the number of

Hermetic societies and Mystery Cults you

wish to include, with a larger Tribunal

allowing more of these to plausibly exist.

Lastly, nothing in this book is com-

pulsory for your saga, and there is no sin-

gle “correct” Rhine Tribunal. Rather, this

should be regarded as a set of common

tools or ingredients for your Rhine

Tribunal, all of which are optional. This

book is designed to increase, not restrict,

ideas and possibilities. Want to change

the number of magi in the Tribunal? Go

ahead ... it still works, whether you have

80 magi or 180. Want to site the player

covenant on the island of Rügen? No

problem, simply move Crintera to the

Pomeranian Forest instead. The modular

nature of this book should allow you to

simply pick and choose those elements

that are to your liking. (Of course, you

may decide to use everything without any

problems, either.) Having said that, there

are many historical and geographical facts

(such as the fact that the city of Cologne

exists and is located on the River Rhine,

for example) that you will probably not

want to change.

History and

Myth

How to Use

this Book

This book is primarily designed to be

of use to storyguides and players whose

saga is based in the Rhine Tribunal.

Nevertheless, it may also be useful to

those whose saga is located elsewhere;

perhaps your covenant is situated in near-

by lands, you have magi who plan to

attend House gatherings at Crintera,

Irencillia, or Durenmar, or even the Grand

Tribunal, or you wish to explore the

forests near your covenant in more detail.

Some of the covenants, mythic sites, and

stories contained herein may also be

adapted for your part of Mythic Europe.

There are three important things that

should be borne in mind as you read this

book:

Firstly, if you are player in a saga set

in the Rhine Tribunal, you should ﬁrst

consult with your storyguide — while

Whilst the majority of the history

(apart from the Hermetic history) in this

book is what really happened, the real his-

tory has been changed in certain places in

order to place greater emphasis on myth.

For example, the events of the

Nibelungenlied did not really occur in any-

thing like the way the epic poem tells

them. Yet in Mythic Germany, the sub-

ject of this book, a place where magi and

faeries exist and where many of the

ancient legends are true, it is a true

retelling. If magic exists, then it is likely

that stories of magic are true stories. For

this reason, this book should not be con-

sidered as a reliable history reference.

This book describes a number of

mythic sites, most of which are real

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